De'Longhi Perfecta ESAM5500 Bean To Cup Coffee Machine

I've had this machine for 2 months now and so far I have to say it's been wonderful. For the last two years I used a Gaggia Classic, which made great coffee but was a pain to keep clean and you had to get the grind and tamping of the coffee absolutely spot on or it would punish you with a cup of lesser quality. It had also started leaking coffee out of the filter for reasons I could not work out. Nor did I use the milk frother as previous experience of these has taught me they can be temperamental and take a lot of cleaning. I personally never drink milk in any form so it would only be used for friends. I wanted to get rid of these problems but feared that a machine that does everything might more easily break down. Anyway, I took the plunge and I have to say it has more than met my hopes.

I only ever use coffee from the great Algerian Coffee Store in London's Old Compton Street (they do mail order if you can't get to them) and this machine really gets the best out of it. It really is so easy - stick the beans in the hopper, ensure the water tank is full, set the machine to auto so that it comes on in the morning by itself and you can make a perfect cup in no time and have nothing to clean up. Getting rid of the extra actions of grinding your own coffee, then getting it into a filter without spilling much and then cleaning afterwards has saved a load of time in the mornings.

You have full control over a number of features: fineness of grind, coffee strength, cup size, water heat and so on. I find a relatively fine grind gives best results but if you get it too fine, it can slow water flow - some experimentation should show you the optimal grind for your taste. I have strength set to 'strong' as my wife also likes that - 'extra strong' is great, too. However, anything lower than that produces something I would not call coffee - if you like coffee THAT mild, why bother buying a machine at all? The froth or crema is fantastic in every cup I have produced so far although the manual does tell you that it takes a few cups to get up to standard on first use. Just select the strength and cup size you want (you can also set a custom cup size that the machine will keep in memory) and then press for 1 or 2 cups and the machine does the rest, telling you to wait until it has finished, which is very fast, and then it's ready to produce more cups or you can switch off - if you forget to do this, it will automatically switch off after 3 hours.

There is a hopper for pre-ground coffee and I tried it a couple of times out of curiosity. Results were poor as I don't think the coffee was picked up correctly from the hopper. I'm not too bothered about this as I prefer the integral grinder in any case.

I have only used the cappucino flask attachment once - I had thought people would want it more but it hasn't turned out that way. What I can say is that it works flawlessly and produces a very frothy cappucino (you can adjust settings to have more or less frothiness) which people said was excellent (I don't drink milk). The flask is easy to attach and detach and cleaning is a doddle as there is a button for this on the machine that forces steam through the nozzles. The important thing to note is that no milk enters the body of the machine - that makes a big difference in cleaning. One small problem with the flask - not a defect by any means - is that because of its size, it does not fit in my fridge unless I remove something else - whether it will be a problem for you depends how you organise your fridge.

Maintenance: the manual recommends a number of things. Firstly, you use a supplied litmus paper to test the hardness of your tap water (I always use filtered water but it is not softened) and then enter the setting into the on-board memory. The machine will then signal when you should descale. I live in London, which is a notorious hard water area, but even so I was a bit surprised to get the descale warning only a week ago (only 7 weeks after installation). Descaling is simple (a bottle of descaler is supplied) - just follow the on-screen instructions. There is very little cleaning required as there is no loose coffee like with a conventional machine nor does it drip very much at all; when the used grounds container needs emptying, the machine tells you (same when the tank needs filling) - open the front of the machine, remove the drip tray and container and rinse after emptying. Once a month, the brew unit, which does all the work, needs to be soaked for 15 minutes in clean water. It's very easy to remove and insert but do this with the machine switched off.

Don't be put off by the apparent size of the machine - the footprint is no bigger than my Gaggia and there is no filter handle jutting out.

That's its. So far, it's been perfect in use and is easy to manage. The real test will be after one or two years.

Let's be honest, starting the day without a decent cup of coffee would be unthinkable in my house and for the last two or three years that role has fulfilled by a Gaggia Titanium which, to be fair, delivers an excellent cup of coffee. The only problem with it is the steamer which is forever leaking.

My Titanium must have gone back to Gaggia at least four or five times, incurring £50 courier fees for the last few because it was then out of warranty. The Gaggia people were always very pleasant but two or three weeks without my main coffee machine (I had a little De'Longhi as a back up) was a nightmare. So, when it starting leaking hot water all over the place again, earlier on this year, I thought "enough is enough" and decided to replace it.

As my little back-up De'Longhi had performed so well I thought I might have a look at the bigger ESAM5500. The reviews seemed to indicate that it was a good buy so I held my breath and clicked "purchase". In typically brilliant Amazon fashion it arrived the next day, well packaged and ready to go.

As they say in the instructions, it takes a few coffees before it really comes into its own but by the following day this machine was delivering coffee par excellence.

What do I like about it? The hopper for the beans is easy to fill and they never get stuck (unlike the Gaggia). The tank is at the front and is easily accessible (unlike the Gaggia), it dispenses hot, frothy milk direct from the jug provided and you can alter the amount of air that goes into the milk so there is an almost infinite variation from plain hot milk for lattes to very frothy milk for cappuccinos. The grind settings are easy to alter as are the strength and volume settings for the dispenser.

What don't I like? It needs descaling pretty regularly (about every two weeks for mine - but we do drink a lot of coffee) and the DeLonghi proprietary descaler is not cheap. However it is a massively false economy to try and get away with supermarket descalers as they are just not up to this particular job. There are cheaper alternatives (e.g. Durgol) which are perfectly adequate but it isn't worth jeopardising a £500+ machine by buying the really cheapo stuff.

Overall this is a great piece of kit that delivers everything you might want from a domestic coffee machine and, even allowing for the frequency of descaling, it still rates the full five stars.

Good Points - Excellent coffee, easy to use, low mess
Bad Points - Size (it is bean-to-cup...), finish (but on a par at this price point)

We purchased this coffee maker as we wanted an easy to use machine - coffee with the lowest amount of faff!

Unpacking the machine we were surprised at its size; it's about 14 inches tall and quite deep, about half the size of a microwave. In comparison to manual espresso machines, very large; about average for bean to cup. Be aware that you need to access the top of the machine to fill with beans or pre-ground coffee, this has limited us to putting it onto a worksurface where there are no wall cupboards.

The machine is quite "plasticy", lacking the elgance of some of the other more expensive steel machines, but still appearing to be high quality. The drip tray top is steel and appears to be prone to scratching - it's scratched from the milk container within 3 weeks.

Setting up the machine was very easy - plug in, fill with water & beans, coffee mug steaming! At first the coffee seemed quite cool, even with the temperature set to the highest setting. Pre-warming the mugs with hot water solved this.

The potential coffee options are immense - long coffee, strong coffee, very short coffee, double shot etc. It took a long time and lots of experimentation to find my ideal coffee (double shot, normal strength & length + 2 shots of frothy milk into a large mug), but once found, it's awesome to have a coffee shop quality coffee within a couple of minutes of waking up! And this is what makes this machine rate 5 stars, the coffee quality is fantastic and so easy to keep clean. It is so easy to use with so little mess my wife is now a convert!